Explore the real-world places that appear in Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Laredo, Texas, Rio Grande — Laredo Crossing, Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Del Rio, Texas, Eagle Pass, Texas and 9 more.
Webb County seat — Central hub of Captain Call's manhunt operations
Laredo serves as the primary base of operations for the aging Captain Woodrow Call, hired by the railroad to track down the young Mexican outlaw Joey Garza. Call assembles his ragged posse here, including the inept Pea Eye Parker and the young deputy Lorena Parker's husband. The town represents the fading frontier era, a place where the old Texas Ranger legend of Call is both respected and pitifully out of place.
Laredo was founded in 1755 as a Spanish colonial settlement on the Rio Grande. It became a critical crossing point between the United States and Mexico and grew significantly after the arrival of the International-Great Northern Railroad in the 1880s. By the late 19th century it was a bustling border city with deep ties to both nations.
Laredo is today one of the largest inland ports on the US-Mexico border and a city of nearly 275,000 people. Historic San Agustin Plaza remains the heart of the original colonial settlement. The city maintains strong bicultural character and is home to Texas A&M International University.
Visit: San Agustin Plaza Historic District (historic site)
International Bridge area — Border crossing between Texas and Tamaulipas
The Rio Grande crossing is a recurring site of danger and pursuit in the novel. Joey Garza crosses back and forth across the border with ease, using the river as a natural escape route that stymies American lawmen who cannot legally pursue into Mexico. Call grows frustrated at the river's role as a legal barrier that shields the cunning young killer from American justice.
The Rio Grande has served as the US-Mexico border since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The Laredo crossing was among the most heavily used in the 19th century, facilitating both legitimate trade and considerable smuggling and bandit activity. Multiple international bridges have been built here over the decades.
The Gateway to the Americas International Bridge connects Laredo, Texas to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas and remains one of the busiest commercial border crossings in North America. The river itself is significantly lower today due to water diversion but remains a powerful symbolic and physical boundary.
Visit: Gateway to the Americas International Bridge (landmark)
Across the Rio Grande — Mexican border town where Joey Garza operates
Nuevo Laredo is where Joey Garza retreats after his raids, knowing that American lawmen are powerless once he crosses the river. Call eventually crosses into Mexico regardless of jurisdiction, driven by obsession to bring the young killer down. The Mexican side of the border is portrayed as a lawless extension of the outlaw's territory, a place where old codes of pursuit mean nothing.
Nuevo Laredo was established in 1848 after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forced residents of the original Laredo settlement who wished to remain Mexican citizens to relocate south of the Rio Grande. It grew rapidly as a companion city to Laredo, Texas, sharing deep cultural and economic ties.
Nuevo Laredo is a major Mexican city of roughly 425,000 people in the state of Tamaulipas. It remains the most important commercial border crossing on the US-Mexico border by freight volume. The city has faced significant security challenges related to cartel activity in the 21st century.
Visit: Nuevo Laredo Historic Center (landmark)
Val Verde County — Frontier town along the Call party's route
Del Rio figures among the frontier settlements that Call and his diminishing posse pass through during their westward pursuit of Joey Garza. McMurtry uses such towns to illustrate the exhaustion and decay of the frontier era — saloons full of drifters, aging lawmen, and citizens who recall a wilder Texas but now live quietly under the shadow of the railroad's order.
Del Rio was established in the 1870s near the confluence of San Felipe Creek and the Rio Grande. The arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1883 transformed it into a significant regional hub. The area's mild climate and agricultural potential drew settlers throughout the late 19th century.
Del Rio is the county seat of Val Verde County with a population of around 35,000. Amistad National Recreation Area nearby draws visitors for boating and fishing on the large reservoir formed by Amistad Dam. The city retains its border character and strong Mexican-American cultural heritage.
Visit: Amistad National Recreation Area (park)
Maverick County — Rio Grande crossing town, gateway to Piedras Negras
Eagle Pass is one of the border towns through which the pursuit of Joey Garza passes. McMurtry evokes these crossings as places of moral ambiguity where American law dissolves into a porous border zone. Call's party moves through such towns gathering intelligence about Garza's movements, often finding that locals on both sides of the river fear the young killer too much to speak openly.
Eagle Pass was established as a military post, Fort Duncan, in 1849 to protect the border after the Mexican-American War. It became an important crossing point and saw significant activity during the US Civil War, when Confederate cotton was shipped through Mexico to avoid the Union blockade.
Eagle Pass is a city of about 29,000 and remains an important US-Mexico crossing point opposite Piedras Negras, Coahuila. Fort Duncan Park preserves the original fort grounds. The city is a center for the regional ranching economy and cross-border commerce.
Visit: Fort Duncan Museum (museum)
Presidio County — Remote border outpost on the Rio Grande
Presidio represents the extreme edge of frontier civilization in the novel, a harsh, sun-blasted outpost that McMurtry uses to convey the desolation of Call's twilight pursuit. The remoteness of such settlements along the Big Bend reaches emphasizes how far Call is from any institutional support, operating as a solitary old man in a vast and hostile landscape.
Presidio sits opposite Ojinaga, Chihuahua at the confluence of the Rio Conchos and the Rio Grande, one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in North America. The area was a Spanish colonial settlement and military presidio long before American arrival. It remains one of the most isolated towns in Texas.
Presidio is a small city of roughly 4,000 people and is one of the hottest places in the United States, regularly recording some of the highest summer temperatures in the country. The Presidio-Ojinaga International Bridge connects the two border communities. Big Bend Ranch State Park lies nearby.
Visit: Big Bend Ranch State Park (park)
Brewster County — Desolate canyon country where Joey Garza hides
The vast Chihuahuan Desert and the canyons of the Big Bend region serve as Joey Garza's killing ground in the novel. Armed with a long-range rifle, the young outlaw picks off his victims from canyon rims and distant ridges, vanishing into the broken terrain before anyone can respond. Call and his posse are rendered nearly helpless by the landscape — old men and incompetents stalking a phantom killer across impossible country.
The Big Bend region was among the last parts of Texas to be explored and settled by Anglo-Americans, largely because of its extreme remoteness and the resistance of the Comanche and Apache peoples who used it as refuge territory. The area saw significant outlaw and bandit activity through the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Big Bend National Park, established in 1944, protects over 800,000 acres of Chihuahuan Desert, river canyons, and Chisos Mountain highlands. It is one of the least visited major national parks due to its remoteness but is renowned for its dramatic scenery, dark skies, and biodiversity.
Visit: Big Bend National Park (park)
Bexar County — Headquarters of the Texas Rangers and Call's world
San Antonio represents the institutional heart of the old Texas Ranger world that shaped Woodrow Call. The city is mentioned as the seat of the civilization Call once protected and the place where his legend was built. McMurtry draws a melancholy contrast between the ordered urban life of San Antonio and the savage, decaying frontier where Call still operates, a relic of a different age.
San Antonio was founded as a Spanish mission and presidio settlement in 1718 and became the most important city in Texas during the Spanish and Mexican periods. It was the headquarters of Texas Ranger operations throughout the 19th century and the site of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836.
San Antonio is the second-largest city in Texas with a population of about 1.4 million. The San Antonio River Walk is one of Texas's top tourist destinations. The Alamo, Missions National Historical Park, and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame are major attractions celebrating the city's frontier heritage.
Visit: The Alamo (historic site)
Laredo to San Antonio corridor — The railroad that hires Captain Call
The railroad company hires the aging Captain Call out of retirement to hunt down Joey Garza, whose raids on the rail line have become an expensive and embarrassing problem. The railroad represents the new commercial order displacing the frontier era that made men like Call. McMurtry uses the tension between Call's old Ranger methods and the railroad's corporate interests to explore the theme of a legend outliving his time.
The International-Great Northern Railroad connected Laredo to San Antonio and beyond, completing its line in the early 1880s. It was a crucial artery for commerce between Mexico and the interior of the United States and transformed the economic character of South Texas. The line later became part of the Missouri Pacific system.
The original IGN corridor now forms part of the Union Pacific Railroad network. Passenger rail service on this route ended decades ago, though freight trains still run the corridor. The railroad's legacy shaped the development patterns of South Texas towns along its route.
Remote West Texas / Chihuahua borderlands — Joey Garza's stronghold
Crow Town is the remote, lawless settlement deep in the borderlands where Joey Garza operates as a near-mythological figure of terror. McMurtry populates it with outlaws, prostitutes, and desperate men living beyond American law. Call's climactic pursuit leads toward this desolate place, and the confrontation there costs him catastrophically — he loses his hand to Garza's rifle and barely survives, a broken version of the legend he once embodied.
While Crow Town is fictional, it is based on real outlaw refuges that existed in the trans-Pecos region and along the Chihuahua border in the 1880s and 1890s. Remote settlements beyond effective law enforcement were common in this era, sheltering outlaws fleeing both American and Mexican authorities.
The remote desert borderlands where McMurtry sets Crow Town remain among the most sparsely populated terrain in the continental United States. The area around Presidio County and the Chihuahua border is accessed today primarily through Big Bend Ranch State Park and private ranches.
Across from Presidio, Texas — Deep Mexican territory in the pursuit
Ojinaga represents the deep Mexican interior that Call must penetrate during his obsessive pursuit of Joey Garza. In McMurtry's telling, crossing into Chihuahua means entering a world where Call's Ranger badge means nothing and where Garza has allies and knowledge of the terrain that Call can never match. The Mexican side of the border is portrayed as ancient, indifferent, and quietly hostile to the aging American lawman.
Ojinaga, originally called Presidio del Norte, was one of the earliest Spanish settlements in the trans-Pecos region, established in the 17th century. It sits at the confluence of the Rio Conchos and Rio Grande, a strategically important location that made it a center of regional trade and conflict for centuries.
Ojinaga is a city of about 25,000 people in the state of Chihuahua. It is connected to Presidio, Texas by an international bridge. The city serves as a gateway to the interior of Chihuahua and is surrounded by the dramatic Chihuahuan Desert landscape that McMurtry so vividly describes.
Visit: Ojinaga Historic Center (landmark)
Donley County, Texas Panhandle — Home of Pea Eye and Lorena Parker
Lorena Parker, formerly a prostitute rescued by Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove, is now a schoolteacher and farmer's wife in the Texas Panhandle. Her husband Pea Eye is recruited by Call for the manhunt, and Lorena's fierce opposition to this mission drives a powerful domestic subplot. She fears — correctly — that the old Ranger world will consume Pea Eye, and her determined efforts to retrieve her husband and protect her family give the novel much of its emotional core.
Clarendon was established in 1878 by Methodist colonists seeking a temperance community on the Texas Plains and was known for a time as 'Saints' Roost.' The surrounding Panhandle grasslands were transformed from open range to farming and ranching operations in the late 19th century as the frontier closed.
Clarendon is a small city of about 2,000 people and serves as the seat of Donley County. The surrounding area remains primarily agricultural, with cattle ranching and dryland farming. The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in nearby Canyon preserves the regional frontier heritage.
Potter County — Northern Texas hub connecting Panhandle to the frontier
Amarillo represents the edge of settled civilization in the northern arc of the novel's geography. Characters moving between the Panhandle and the southern border country pass through this growing railroad city, and McMurtry uses it to mark the transition between the domestic world of Lorena's farm and the dangerous frontier world of Call's pursuit. The city embodies the railroad-driven commercial future displacing the open-range past.
Amarillo was founded in 1887 as a railroad town for the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway and grew rapidly as the region's cattle shipping hub. It sits at the center of the Texas Panhandle and became one of the most important cattle marketing centers in the world by the early 20th century.
Amarillo is a city of about 200,000 and remains the commercial hub of the Texas Panhandle. Palo Duro Canyon State Park — the 'Grand Canyon of Texas' — is a major nearby attraction. The city is known for its steakhouses, Route 66 heritage, and Cadillac Ranch public art installation.
Visit: Palo Duro Canyon State Park (park)
Pecos County — West Texas army post and frontier waypoint
Fort Stockton represents the military infrastructure of the frontier that is already fading by the time of Call's final manhunt. McMurtry evokes such posts as reminders of when the Texas frontier required active military suppression of Comanche and Apache resistance — a war that is now over, leaving structures and old men who fought it with little purpose. Call's passing through such places underscores his own obsolescence.
Fort Stockton was established in 1859 at Comanche Springs, one of the most important water sources in West Texas. It served as a key post on the San Antonio-El Paso Road and played a significant role in the post-Civil War campaigns against Comanche and Apache raiders. The fort was abandoned in 1886.
The Fort Stockton Historic Site preserves several original adobe structures from the military post and is open to visitors. The town of Fort Stockton, with about 8,000 residents, serves as a hub for the Permian Basin oil and ranching economy. Comanche Springs no longer flows due to groundwater depletion.
Visit: Fort Stockton Historic Site (historic site)
More by Larry McMurtry: All Larry McMurtry books